Speaking of Trademarks, Maybe Chik-fil-A Should Start Serving a Kale-fil-A

Would you have a hard time distinguishing the source of a fast food chicken sandwich if a t-shirt company trademarked a phrase used on their t-shirts that promotes sustainable food?

In other words, if you saw this:

Would you think this:

Or this:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office defines a trademark as "a word, name, symbol, or device that is used in trade with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish them from the goods of others."

Chik-fil-A released the following comments about the legal matter via PR Newswire.

ATLANTA, Dec. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- In 2006, we became aware of a Vermont company using the phrase "Eat More Kale" on T-shirts, which are sold on their website, www.eatmorekale.com. We have co-existed under these circumstances since 2006.

However, in August of 2011, the Vermont company submitted its application to trademark the slogan "Eat More Kale" for use and protection nationally. Because of this new development, we are required to protect "Eat Mor Chikin®," our own brand and trademark.

We support the entrepreneurial spirit of small business, and, in fact, our business model is founded on providing opportunity for small business owners. Every one of our 1,603 restaurants is owned and operated by a local business person who lives in and gives back to their community. Unfortunately, when protecting our trademark, the law does not allow us to differentiate between a large company or a small enterprise.

Our award-winning advertising campaign has been in place for the past 16 years, and we must legally protect and defend our "Eat Mor Chikin®" trademarks in order to maintain rights to the slogan. It is not uncommon for us – or for any corporation – to defend our trademark rights.

What do you think? Please share comments.

Image credits: sandwich, kale, billboard

Word Wars - Dave Hester v. Trey Songz

I want to bring attention to a portion of December 1st's post titled Words: Winning, Losing, Fighting and Banned in 2011. Some of you may have missed it because it was "below the fold". Here it is -

Fighting

YUUUP

Dave Hester of the television show "Storage Wars" and rapper Trey Songz are fighting over the right to use the word YUUUP as a "signature sound". Via an article in the New York Post,

Hester, however, argues that Songz’ version “resembles an animal-like or non-human squeal which begins with a distinct ‘yeeee’ sound before finishing with a squeal-like ‘uuuup’ sound.”

That’s “distinct and different from Hester’s more monosyllabic sounding guttural auction bidding phrase...which is meant to convey the meaning of ‘yes,’ ” court papers say.

What do you think?

COMMENT - They don't sound the same at all to me. I don't hear the /p/ at the end of the Trey Songz version. Also, notice all the different spellings of the sound (not surprising but how do you trademark a sound based on spelling). I think they will need the services of a forensic linguist and the trademark will have to be based upon a phonetic transcription.

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The reason I reposted the above portion of the post is that I really want to hear what readers think. Do you think the sounds are similar? Do you think a sound like this should be trademarkable? What do you think about the various spellings? Is this a matter of trademarking a word, a series of letters, a sound, or some combination of the three?

I have begun work on an MSc in forensic linguistics and the subject of the trademarkability of sounds is one I am considering for a paper. Please share any and all thoughts you may have on the subject by clicking on the comment button.

Acronyms in the News

The October 1 issue of The Week magazine mentions that the International House of Pancakes is suing the International House of Prayer (A Kansas City religious mission) for using its acronym. Apparently the International House of Prayer has abbreviated its name as IHOP for the past 10 years without incident and only recently has it become an issue, according to an International House of Pancakes spokesman, because "the church has expanded and now some of the branches are serving food."

I wonder what would happen if the International House of Prayer started giving out MP3 players loaded with prayers and changed the orthography of its acronym to iHOP?

Reader's Favorites - Zipper Falls Prey to Genericide

A zipper by any other name...is still a zipper. When the word zipper was first trademarked it was considered a proper noun that was capitalized, it was only through repeated usage that the word zipper became a generic name for any product that resembled and performed the same function as a zipper. The term genericide was coined to describe the process by which a trademarked or brand name becomes a generic name for the product category. According to the website WordSpy, the first recorded use of the word genericide was in an article in Legal Times in 1983.


Some other familiar brand names that have suffered from genericide include: aspirin, escalator, granola, heroin, yo-yo and linoleum. Aditionally, the San Fransisco Examiner lists the following brand names as endangered (though I would argue that some of them have already fallen prey to genericide): Band-Aid, Xerox, Realtor, Jeep, Rollerblade and Coke.

Zipper Falls Prey to Genericide

A zipper by any other name...is still a zipper. When the word zipper was first trademarked it was considered a proper noun that was capitalized, it was only through repeated usage that the word zipper became a generic name for any product that resembled and performed the same function as a zipper. The term genericide was coined to describe the process by which a trademarked or brand name becomes a generic name for the product category. According to the website WordSpy, the first recorded use of the word genericide was in an article in Legal Times in 1983.

Some other familiar brand names that have suffered from genericide include: aspirin, escalator, granola, heroin, yo-yo and linoleum. Aditionally, the San Fransisco Examiner lists the following brand names as endangered (though I would argue that some of them have already fallen prey to genericide): Band-Aid, Xerox, Realtor, Jeep, Rollerblade and Coke.

Onomatopoeias Zipping Past

This morning while driving my son to school, he mentioned that yesterday was National Zipper Day. While I think all the various "National whatever days" are really silly, it did get me thinking about the word zipper. Zipper is a really cool sounding word because it sounds like what it does; zip clothing closed quickly. Words that sound like what they do are called onomatopoeias. Zip originally meant "to move quickly" because zip is thought to resemble the sound something makes when it moves quickly, thus it is onomatopoeic. Interestingly, zipper did not become the name of the fastener that we know by that name until it was trademarked in 1925 by the B. F. Goodrich Company, who used the fastener on rubber boots. And it wasn't until the fastener was trademarked that the word zip acquired its verbal definition of closing something with a zipper.

Some other onomatopoeias: buzz, hiss, fizz, boom, crackle, kerplunk, smack, whizz, whoosh, bang